No Impact Man: The Movie

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Local food only

July 16, 2007

How are the earthworm castings faring, and to what uses are
they being put?

For those of you who don’t know, I prevent my food scraps
from ending up in the landfill by composting them. But because I live in an
apartment, I use a technique that accelerates the process and prevents odors,
called vermicomposting, which means keeping red-wiggler worms in a bin and
letting them eat the scraps.

Red wigglers are worms that live in the leafy part of the
forest floor. They have a nice leaf-like home in my worm bin made from other
people’s torn up newspapers (for the purposes of the project, we buy no
newspapers so as not to make trash). The food scraps go in, and about three
months later, a rich, loamy compost (literally worm manure or “castings”) comes
out.

I have harvested from the worm bin twice now. Both times I
used the compost to top feed whichever plants looked like they needed the most
help at the Laguardia Community Gardens, where I help a man named
Mayer Vishner with his vegetable plot.

Should the tomato plants not be bearing by now?

Alas, the window I had the tomato plants in got full sun all
spring, but when the earth tilted for summer, the tomatoes ended up in the
shade. They got really tall and lanky. Finally, I faced up to the fact that
they would bear no fruit and gave them to a friend to plant in her garden
(Mayer’s plot was already full). They are much happier now, I’m told, have
flowered and will soon make tomatoes.

How was the matter of cooling/refrigerating/pot-in-pot ever
settled?

The last thing we tried was a cooler with reusable freezer
packs from a neighbor’s fridge. But the neighbor is taken to all-night parties,
we could never get the freezer packs when we needed them, and the solution was
inelegant anyway. Now, we just live without a fridge. We simply shop for only
two days at a time, and it’s all working out.

What does the daily diet consist of and how does one avoid
deadly monotony in it?

Monotony? When at last the farmers’ market is teaming with
every vegetable you can imagine, you ask me about monotony? What you mean is
excitement, no? After all, local eating meant we virtually survived on cabbage,
apples and eggs all winter. In the heat, we’ve been eating a lot of salads with
all sorts of yummy veggies and berries tossed in. Our diet is the healthiest
it’s ever been. You can see it in the whites of our eyes.

How is everyone getting along in the hot summer of New York?

Because we have no mains electricity, we have no air
conditioning or fans. We’re lucky in that we get good cross-ventilation. We
close the windows and shades in the morning to keep out sun and hot air. We
open them at night to let in cool air. So far, not so bad, actually. I mean, we sweat, and we try to stay out of long sleeves and pants. It feels kind of natural.

There has to be an exchange: NoImpactMan has no impact on
the environment, but that does not mean that the environment will have no
impact on NoImpactMan. What impacts is the environment having on him?

Little things. Who knew that the sun shone full in the
living room in the spring but not in the summer until I tried to grow tomatoes?
Or who knew that without air conditioning the way to stay cool is just to spend
more time outside on the stoops and in the parks? Who knew how glorious it is
when the summer arrives and all the wonderful vegetables or fruits start to be
in season? A gift of this project is that even though we live in the City, we
have found ourselves reconnected with some of nature’s rhythms. And that, I
think, is a good thing.

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

July 11, 2007

I am a vegetarian, and honestly, the reason is because I
like cows. For all the overgrazing of land and methane cows fart and burp into
the atmosphere, the real reason I don’t support the beef industry is that I
think cows are just too damn cool to eat. I know that people argue that having
sharp teeth proves we are evolutionarily intended to eat flesh. I don’t care. I like cows.

I know, too, that there is an argument for veganism—no eggs
or cheese or animal products of any kind—as an environmental choice. And I respect it. But I like
too much the idea of having a symbiotic relationship with animals. Even just
having Frankie the little dog helps connect me and my family to the planet. I’ve perceived a similar but much stronger connection at small farms that keep
animals and treat them with kindness and respect.

When I was at Hawthorne Valley Farm, I got up at 4:00 in the morning and helped bring the herd
in for milking. The sky was still the color of blackberries and, coincidentally, milk.
The cows stood on hill in black silhouette. Henry, the bull, shook his head and
rang his bell.

The seventy-strong herd slowly sauntered over to the gate
and followed us back to the cow shed. Centuries of breeding meant that, with their
udders swelled with so much more milk than their calves could drink, they
looked forward to milking. They depend on their being milked as much as we do.

So we get them back and milk them and feed them and
eventually they are all lying down in their stalls, regurgitating their cud and
chewing it. One of the farm hands I’m talking to is sitting on one of the cows,
who doesn’t seem to mind at all. My feet are tired so I decide to do the same.

Before you know it, I’m lying on my tummy along the full
length of a cow’s back, casually scratching her between her ears, and I can
tell she likes it (mostly because a farm hand tells me so). I like it too. I
really like it. She is warm and alive. And so calm, so incredibly calm.

A few weeks earlier, I had been talking to Ronny, who owns
Ronnybrook Farm. He was telling me about the financial difficulties that come
with dairy farming. I asked him why he sticks with it. He said, “Because I love the
cows.”

Now, I’m lying on the back of this one cow, and you know
what I realize? I love cows, too. And you know what I think? I think that the relationship that the farmers at Hawthorne Valley and at Ronnybrook have with
their cows is kind of wonderful. It connects us to the planet.

Don’t get me wrong. I intensely dislike the factory farming
of animals, and I believe that as a culture, we farm way more cows than the
planet can support. But on small farms, where people and animals are working
together in kind and respectful relationship, like at Hawthorne Valley and Ronnybrook, I think
there is something special going on.

PS If I've got you all excited about cows, read about their emotional lives here.

PPS The picture above comes courtesy of Compassion in World Farming, whose vision "is a world where farm animals are treated with compassion and respect and where cruel factory farming practices end."

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

June 27, 2007

Umpteen people have written to me, because they would like
me to go vegan. If I did, they say, I could eat raw, save the carbon produced
by cooking on my natural gas stove (which I still haven’t figured out how to
get around), and be kinder to animals. They tell me I could eat lots of nuts
and beans for protein.

Problem is, I can’t find nuts and beans grown within 250
miles of the city, and eating local, to reduce food miles, is one of the
parameters of the No Impact project. Now, I know that the vegans in the crowd
would say that perhaps I should relax my mileage standards. Someone even wrote
me that it would be better to drive a hummer and not eat meat.

Well, good news! I don’t drive a hummer and I don’t eat meat. But I do eat eggs, cheese and milk. The thing
is, I’ve visited the farms and seen how the animals are treated, and I’m
content that they are treated well. That is to say, my conscience is clear. I’m satisfied with that.

Each of us who want to live an environmental life has to
make choices and trade offs. I really admire vegans for making theirs. The vegan
choice is an excellent and important ingredient in the mix. I thank vegans
for reminding us all about how important it is to be kind to animals (Frankie,
my little dog, pictured here, is by the way in full agreement on this point).

The way I see it, vegans help promote kindness to animals.
Local eaters help reduce food miles. Between the two groups, we promote a range
of environmental options for people to pick up. There are many ways to be kind
to the planet. In other words, it takes all sorts.

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

March 23, 2007

So many people
emailed me yesterday, thanks! I’m answering
your questions here instead of by email so everyone can see. I’ll answer more
in subsequent posts. Also, thanks to everyone for all the comments on the posts.
I have to read through them still, but I’ll try to answer questions there
soon, too.

Can you buy
educational games or toys for your daughter?

Isabella got a lovely, second hand rocking horse from the Housing Works thrift store the other day. Of course, when we got it home we realized it had
the name “Miles” etched on its neck but we decided that that was the name not
of the owner but of the “worsey,” as Isabella calls it. The rule is that we can
buy second hand stuff only (with the exception of socks and underwear). But
honestly, Isabella would rather bang together pots and pans and walk down the
street with her hands in her pockets than play with toys.

Are you allowed to
use over-the-counter drugs if you get sick?

Yup.

Have you considered
the climate/waste/energy input associated with eating dairy?

Please don’t try to make us give up our milk and cheese and
homemade yogurt. I’m begging you. Since we’re eating only unpackaged local and
seasonal food, that would pretty much leave us with nothing but apples a la
cabbage and cabbage a la apples. Besides, we buy our milk from the local Ronnybrook Farms, where the cows are fed grass and homegrown corn.

How do you make fruit
scrap vinegar?

Great book: Wild
Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz. Get your scraps of fruit—apple cores,
dregs of berries (though no berries for us cause they’re not in season),
whatever—and chop up coarsely. Dissolve a quarter cup of honey (recipe calls
for sugar but I can’t get it locally) in one quart water. Throw the scraps in and
cover with a cloth. Let ferment for two or three weeks, stirring occasionally.
Adds great flavor to—you guessed it—cabbage.

What about books (I
couldn’t live without them)?

No purchase of anything new except socks and underwear and a
couple of other personal items is the rule. As for books, we use the library
and we can buy a second hand book from the Strand,
around the corner, if we sell a book (no accumulation of resources).

Would you mind
telling me the address of the Yahoo group mentioned during your appearance on
the Brian Lehrer show?

Could you write a bit
on why you decided to pursue a career outside of academic science? And how, if
at all, your doctorate training in physics has affected your subsequent career.
Was making the choice to leave academia easy or difficult?

What a random and fun question. Do I detect a PhD student who wants
to quit? My doctoral studies—in electronic engineering actually—were in a
galaxy far away and long ago. Liverpool University. Mid-eighties. I hated
working in a lab. If I had had any courage at all, I would have quit way before
I finished my doctorate, but I was young and scared of making those kind of
decisions. It was a very hard choice but the only one possible if I wanted to
stay happy. All the same, the training—essentially in how to teach yourself things—has
been invaluable in my life. You didn’t ask, but after that I went into public
relations for not-for-profits, also in Liverpool, then moved back to the
States, drove taxis in Martha’s Vineyard (eek, don’t tell the people who read
my blog that I drove!), and then decided to move to New York, twelve years
ago, to try my hand as a writer, which is what I wanted to do since about age
six.

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

March 22, 2007

I expect a lot of new visitors here today, so I’m going to
devote this post to a quick survey of consumer-related activities that contribute most to the planet’s pressing environmental
problems and some measures each of us can take in our own lives to improve things. But before we
get to that, let me tell you why I’m expecting all the new visitors.

First, I’m going to be on WYNC’s The Brian Lehrer Show live at 10:06 AM EST today, March 21, 2007 (you can also listen to the recorded show if
you missed it live). We’ll be taking calls (212-433-9692), so please phone in! I
will not be nervous…I will not be nervous…Well, that’s not working.

Second, there’s a New York Times story about the No Impact
project on the front page of today's House and Home Section. It’s the result of
reporter Penelope Green following us around for a few days asking all manner of
personal questions about our No Impact lifestyle.

(One thing I wish I could change in the story is this idea that we are doing this project because it "was the only one of four [book ideas] his agent thought would sell." If I could change that bit, it would read, "Mr. Beavan had decided that with so many urgent problems in the world, writing more history books felt irrelevant. He decided to change the course of his career. When he presented ten ideas about the environment to his agent, Beavan was surprised that his agent most liked Beavan's personal favorite--the No Impact Man idea.")

But the point of today’s post is to point you towards things
we can do to cure what Al Gore yesterday called the planet’s
fever. When it comes to helping the planet, I’m just a schlub trying to
figure it all out myself, so I hope you won’t mind that I’ve borrowed from the
Union of Concerned Scientists’ The
Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices (you can read the first
chapter online).

I’m going to mention, first, the consumer-related
activities--which your purchase and activity choices can affect--that most harm the environment. According to the Guide, they are (in order of importance):

Driving (because of air pollution and greenhouse gasses)

Production of meat and poultry (because of land use that destroys natural habitats,
use of water, water pollution, and production of methane, a greenhouse gas)

Cultivation of fruits, vegetables and grains (because of
water use, soil erosion, and water pollution through pesticide and fertilizer
use)

Home heating, hot water and air conditioning (because of air
pollution and greenhouse gasses)

Household appliances and lighting (because of air pollution
and greenhouse gasses)

Home construction (because of land use that destroys natural habitats, timber harvesting,
and water pollution due to materials production)

Household water, sewage and solid waste disposal (because of
water pollution and air pollution from incinerators)

So what can you do? Well, for one thing, now that you have a really brief
understanding of the problems, you can come back here to No Impact Man to see what me and other folks or up to. But for today, I’m going to send you on your merry way to the
following places for actions each of us can take to make our own lives, if not
No Impact, then at least Lower Impact:

Also, please don’t forget that April 14 is the National Day of
Climate Action, when tens of thousands of Americans will gather all across the
country to call for action on climate change. To
find out what is happening in New York City,
go here. For elsewhere in the country, go
here.

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

March 19, 2007

Today is a day for some practical living details on our No
Impact lifestyle, answering questions that have come in comments and private
emails, and mentioning a couple of news stories that are kind of alarming.

Too hot for comfort—The
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced on
Friday that the 2006/2007 winter has been the warmest since recordkeeping began
in 1880. As a result, the world’s biological
clock is out of kilter. Winter wheat came a month early in the Netherland and experts worry there may be a greater than usual risk of grain diseases. In Italy,
green beans, artichokes, peas and asparagus are already so plentiful that
merchants can’t sell them. The list
of weirdness goes on. Meanwhile, ten of the last eleven years have been the
hottest on record. But according
to Reuters, Jay Lawrimore of NOAA said of our virtually missing winter, “We
don’t say this winter is evidence of the influence of greenhouse gasses.” Well,
maybe you don’t say it, Jay…

Bush: Just say no…to
global warming initiatives—According to the BBC, the United
States, in a meeting of ministers from the Group of Eight (G8) leading
industrialized nations, put the kibosh on multinational initiatives to curb
global warming by paying developing nations to preserve their rainforests and
to extend to them the global system of carbon trading. Could it be that the oil
companies and other big business, who give heavily to both our political parties,
might be influencing U.S. policy in places that are out of view of American voters?

Hoisted by my own
petard—Because of the No Impact injunction against buying tree-consuming
newspapers and magazines, I couldn’t buy a copy of the New York Times yesterday
(Sunday), even though it contained an OpEd on the No Impact project by yours truly. So, Michelle and I went through our
building’s recycling pile and finally found a couple of copies. If you don’t
feel like crawling through the trash, content yourself with reading it on the
web.

The knife at my
throat—According to Grist, 2
billion disposable razors end up in U.S. dumps every year. Furthermore, the disposable razor blade, invented by King Camp
Gillette, helped usher in our disposable culture back in the early 1900s. That’s
why I’ve been using a straightedge razor since Christmas. I use hand soap to
make a lather—no disposable shaving foam cans—and use my hands to apply it since
most shaving brushes are made from beaver fur. If you want to know how to shave
with the long blade, go here.
It took a while, but the emergency room nurses no longer know me on a first
name basis and I get as close a shave as I used to.

What do you use to
clean up when your dog does her business (question by email from Helen Coxe)?—I
go to the trash can on the corner and take something out that is already
destined for the dump. I try not to use pages from one of our few remaining
magazines, because they would normally be going to the recycling bin, which
they can’t once Frankie has had her way with them.

Did you consider
switching to a veggie diet to reduce your impact (question by email from Jodie)?—I was already veggie, Jodie. Michelle has
joined me. Nothing that wiggles or has a face. That's a No Impact rule. To
quote you: “There are many reasons why a vegetarian diet has a smaller
environmental impact than a diet that includes meat. For example, for every ten
calories of grain that is fed to an animal, one calorie of meat is produced. It
makes more sense to just eat the grains directly. Massive amounts of water and
land are used to grow that grain and to support the animals. If people just ate
the grains instead, less land and less water would be used in the long run. Not
to mention the farmed animals produce waste and excrement that end up polluting
water and topsoil.” And also, if you remember the recent scare, it pollutes
our spinach too.

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

March 13, 2007

This afternoon, I’ll be going to the Laguardia Community
Garden (LCG) to help build a trellis to grow snap peas—apparently an early
season crop. I’ll be building it with my new friend Mayer Vishner on whose 10
foot by 15 foot plot I am going to be a sort of share cropper.

To grow your own vegetables in New York City, if you are an apartment dweller like me, you
need to have a garden plot.

Garden plots are quite common in Europe.
There, land for plots is set aside because it makes people happy to garden in
their cities. Here, where we worship no gods before market economics, land is
just too expensive to waste on plant-loving hippies with too much time on their
hands.

What community gardens there are in New York tend to be on
land where torn-down derelict buildings once stood and green-thumbed squatters
have moved in to plant flowers and tomatoes. Many of New York’s community gardens are under threat because the
land is worth more if a developer puts more cement and concrete on it, so the
city, which owns most of the gardened land parcels, reserves the right to sell.

As a result, it’s hard to get a garden plot in New York. I called LCG and the waiting list is four
years. I did, however, because I had an old phone number, meet Mayer, who is
the garden’s former secretary. He’s a 60-year-old or so character who told me
on the phone that “what hair I have left is down to my shoulders.”

Mayer has been gardening in the City for 30 years. From some
of his biggest and juiciest of crops he collects his own seeds and plants them
the next year. He has essentially developed his own strain of some vegetables.
Anyway, he told me he would be glad to have a partner on his plot, and it is
with him that I will be building the trellis.

I just want to say that this goes to the plusses of this
project. I’ve rushed around my whole life listening to iPods while traveling,
talking on my cell phone while shopping—always trying to do two things at once--but No Impact Man is forcing me to turn my whole life upside
down.

Growing snap peas instead of buying them in the supermarket is about the
most inefficient thing I’ve ever done. I’m not saying that I’ll take the stairs
instead of the elevator or ride my bike instead of the subway for the rest of
my life. I don’t know. But for now, I am totally digging--pun completely intended--the “inefficiency”
that comes from a left-over hippie teaching me to grow my own food.

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

March 11, 2007

This email from a first-grader at Brooklyn's PS 58 came in this weekend:

Dear Colin,

We have to work harder the
ice is melting and some people believe that in fifty years a few places
are gonna be flooded alot. I want to meet you. I like what you are
doing. I want to ask you a question: Can you help us by making posters
and hanging them places so people will know more about pollution and
global warming? We don't eat McDonalds food because it is unhealthy and
the food is not homemade. It is made from a factory and I don't like
it. I don't eat Dunkin Donuts unless I didn't do it on the rest of the
week. It just opened in my neighborhood and it is really hard to not
eat there because even though the donuts come from a factory they
taste good. And I usually don't eat it because my mom forgets her
wallet or I don't want to. I like to make bird feeders with toilet
paper rolls and peanut butter and birdseeds and I like to make bird
puppets out of toilet paper rolls too. And we only use recycled toilet
paper and paper towels and kleenex. Almost my whole school is trying
to stop global warming. It seems like the only things that open are
Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins and McDonalds. Love, Olive

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

March 05, 2007

What do you get when you combine no throwaway packaging with local food only? Not too many tasty treats, I can tell you.

So the other night, I trundled along to a party thrown by the environmental magazine Plenty and bumped into David Kistner, founder of the Green Apple Cleaners, which uses CO2 instead of the highly-toxic perc to dry clean clothes. David introduced me to his wife Effie, and she happened to tell me that her mother, who immigrated from Greece, makes yogurt nearly every day. Why I jumped with joy to hear this news is that, on this damn regime, I haven't been able to get yogurt or just about any other snack food because it always comes in some sort of throwaway plastic packaging which would break the no trash rule.

So Effie emailed me her Mom's recipe, I made it last night, and it's the best. Mix with honey. Yum. Just to have--at last!--some sort of food that I don't have to cook. I mean, I making my own bread every day, for crying out loud. So having yogurt in the fridge is crazy good. Anyway, in case you're interested, here is Effie's Mom's incredibly easy recipe for homemade yogurt:

1) Boil whole milk (for some reason it doesn't come out
right with less than whole milk) in a large pot until it boils and foams at the
top. Shut if off before it spills over.

2) Let the milk cool off until you can keep your pinky
finger in the milk for 10 seconds without burning it (a temperature reading
would have been great for this step but I don't think they had these back in
Greece 70 years ago), so this will be the most difficult step.

3) In a small bowl (that holds about 2 cups) add one
tablespoon of live yogurt and beat it until smooth. Slowly add to this starter one cup of the milk from the pot stirring slowly until combined.

4) Transfer this mixture (in #3 above) to the pot of
boiled milk slowly pouring it in the pot while mixing the pot of milk
the whole time to combine thoroughly (with a spatula or long spoon).

5) Pour into glass or plastic containers and seal
them.

6) Arrange the containers together and cover with 2 to
3 towels keeping them in a warm place of the house (and no, you don't need some sort of a yogurt maker gadget to keep them warm).
Let them sit overnight.

7) In the morning place them in the refrigerator
and they will get cold. Yogurt is done.

8) Do a dance!

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a potluck brunch for a bunch of friends and we set them the challenge of bringing only local food. We thought it would be fun to give people a taste of the No Impact experiment since stage two of No Impact Man is sustainable eating, which means, in the extreme case of our project, we eat only food including ingredients produced within 250 miles. (And by the way, the cows in the picture live only about 100 miles away at the Hudson Valley dairy we use, Ronnybrook Farm, which provides its milk in reusable glass bottles).

The brunch was great. I didn't realize, because I am an only recently converted take out king, but cooking for each other is really a romantic and lovely way of coming together. Everybody had a story about why they chose, say, local honey for their pie instead of further-away maple syrup or how happy they were to find pears instead of apples. Bear in mind, that eating local right now is hard--it's winter. But the challenge made for conversation and it was a blast.

Anyway, we were too busy having fun to discuss the logic of eating local, and there are lots of reasons: "food-miles," "transparency," protecting local farm land, and on and on. I'll post more about the reasons later. But for now, I thought I'd offer a few concluding paragraphs from John Cloud's recent article in Time, "Eating Better Than Organic":

...I had arrived at an answer to my question: I prefer local to
organic, even with the concessions local farmers must make. I realize
there's something romantic about the desire to know exactly where your
food is from...

...But when it
comes to my basic ingredients--literally, my "whole" foods rather than
my convenience foods--I would still rather know the person who collects
my eggs or grows my lettuce or picks my apples than buy 100% organic
eggs or lettuce or apples from an anonymous megafarm at the
supermarket. Choosing local when I can makes me feel more rooted, and
(in part because of that feeling, no doubt) local food tastes better.

Eating
locally also seems safer. Ted's neighbors and customers can see how he
farms. That transparency doesn't exist with, say, spinach bagged by a
distant agribusiness. I help keep Ted in business, and he helps keep me
fed--and the elegance and sustainability of that exchange make more
sense to me than gambling on faceless producers who stamp organic on a
package thousands of miles from my home...

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.